Explicit Normals to Smoothing Groups

[lightcube]

There are times that using Explicit Normals in Max is great. There are other times, not so great. I propose some new functions to convert Explicit Normals into Smoothing Groups (in essence, the reverse of adding an Edit Normals modifier onto a mesh to see the current explicit normal based off of smoothing groups).

meshops.setSGfromNormals <trimesh|mesh|editable_mesh>mesh facelist:<bitarray defaults to #all> clearExplicit:<Boolean true> skipBorders:<Boolean true>

polyop.setSGfromNormals <node editable_poly>mesh facelist:<bitarray defaults to #all> clearExplicit:<Boolean true> skipBorders:<Boolean true>

These methods should calculate the smoothing groups into the mesh by finding all co-located vertices with matching normal vectors and adding them to the same smoothing groups. The functions should be smart enough to consolidate smoothing groups among adjacent smoothed faces/polygons.

facelist: Should limit results to the passed bitarray. If no faces passed, use all faces.

clearExplicit: Should remove the explicit normals on the faces that acquired smoothing groups* (see next option).

skipBorders: When true, explicit normals are kept on the border vertices when clearExplicit it turned on.

[Team2AutodeskSupport]

This would also be really nice when bringing meshes from any other application that has no smoothing groups, into 3dsmax.

[lightcube]

I'd like top propose also that the Smooth modifier gets a new checkbox: SG From Explicit Normals and another checkbox to destroy the explicit normals and retain only resulting smoothing groups from those normals.

[Orphydian]

I see lot of normal related stuff being accepted lately. 

[Team2AutodeskSupport]

While this is an interesting request, I am not sure how it is going to work in cases other than the transition back and forth between applications, if you actually edited the normals outside of a smoothing group, it may not be accurately representable with a smoothing group?

I think what Max really needs is to have normals as a "real" sub object on the poly object, number 6 after elements.

The fragility of custom edited normals is frustrating for users who actually want to take advantage of them in complex scenes and workflows.